Featured image made in Canva
At the beginning of this week, after a weekend full of fun celebrating the Easter Holidays next to family, I had to return with my parents to Slatina, the city where I was born, but which I barely get to see once per year, on the occasion of needing to do some paperwork.
I wasn't too excited about this trip, because things move really slowly when it comes to work with the state institutions that are pretty limited, making it impossible in most of the cases to manage to resolve anything online, but rather ask you to come in person to the counter, which often leads to lots of wasted time.
However, since I managed to get a bit of free time in between these walks and even spent two days at home, on one of these days I decided to take my boyfriend on a long walk in town, as we never really got the chance to walk through Slatina since we are together. In fact, I wasn't too updated on the changes that were made here in the last 10 years since I moved to a different place, so it was going to be a win for both of us.
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The first stop of our walk that was still at the very beginning, was at the green tunnel you see in the 2nd picture from above, which is known as the Tunnel of Love that is basically a basic paved road but with plenty of arches on top that will fill all the blank spaces and bring plenty of nature in a single place, although the city is not lacking when it comes to green spaces, yet a thing that I am very happy with.
Being still at the beginning of Spring with nature slowly awakening, there were quite a few places with empty spots of nature, but everything was still looking very fresh and nice, already doing a good job when it comes to bringing a bit of privacy to the people who decided to stop by one of the benches placed within the tunnel.
Just across where the tunnel ends, the place that is known as Esplanada begins, which used to be the main point of interest during my childhood, seeing people of all ages make their way to this place. Over here you can find anything from restaurants and pubs, to bars where you can enjoy a few billiards matches or just walk around in search of a free bench.
As a kid, I remember you could also see plenty of teenagers practicing skateboarding or BMX tricks along the way, but from what I understood the current mayor created a few parks fully dedicated to this kind of sports, making Esplanda be more of a place where people can go and chill mostly, rather than enjoying sports.
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Linked to the Esplanada there is a park that brings even more chill moments being one step closer to nature and the fountains placed here and there. But along with all the relaxing moments, this is also a great spot from where you can observe the old town right where the park ends, as well as the Marriage House placed on top of the hill, next to the Romanian flag.
Reaching that place both on foot or with a car is quite exhausting as there is a pretty steep and narrow path to follow all the way up, but if you are familiar with sharp curves and very inclined roads, it is totally worth it. The whole road is accompanied by hundreds of meters of painted walls, and the view you get once you are up there leaves you speechless with a full view over the city on the right and a complete view over the Olt River, bridge and nature on the opposite direction.
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At the end of the park we met two kittens that had a really good time enjoying a bit of sun after lots of days with grumpy weather. As a cat mom, I had to take a shot with each of the two, also being grateful for seeing more cats around the city but also tiny houses built by the town hall to take care of them during the cold seasons.
Back when I was a kid, I could barely spot a stray animal on the street, so I was surprised to see some cats during my quick walk in town, but they were all looking really good, which makes me really happy.
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And speaking of the Town Hall, I also ended up crossing by (first pic from above), yet it was not an unknown place for me since my mother used to work here before retirement and used to make my way towards this place in the last year of high school when I was driving her to work.
However, we still dedicated some minutes of our overall walk exploring the Old Town of Slatina that comes with lots of ruins and abandoned places.
While there are some businesses that were born here and there, most of the scenery is still dominated by the abandoned houses that once used to represent something, like the first image from above that sheltered a pub with some of the tastiest pizza one could have and where I was going quite frequently after high school.
Sadly, the place seems like having a different name from what I used to known it for, and even so, it still ended up in disrepair like most of the surroundings. But even with this scenery, most of the wedding photoshoots are taken in this part of the city, offering a great contrast being old and modern times. I am still hoping to see everything being renovated one day, though.
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Once our "urban" walk (re)discovering parts of Slatina concluded, we made it to the final destination of our short trip, which was at the Olt River and bridge that represents where the city ends.
This is a place that is very important for me, because I have plenty of memories created here, from the early mornings spent with my father fishing, to going for a BBQ on one of the islands nearby or having a walk with the people that I used to call friends, there are literally plenty of pictures that were taken along this river, each of them marking different moments of my life.
And even if you can't really see that through my pictures, the Olt River is known as the longest river flowing exclusively within Romania, and it measures around 615 km, making it a pretty important part of the overall country.
We ended up spending almost one entire hour walking around this place, following a different path back home but which ended the day with a bit over 13km walked and almost feeling like tourists in our own hometown that looks so different from what I used to know it for. But I'd lie if saying that I don't love how the economy has evolved in this part of Romania.
Gabriela Travels is a Curator for Worldmappin and Hive Gaming communities, but also the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences.
At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe.
Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (350+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game and book reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 850+ blog posts.
Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.
~ @GabrielaTravels ~
[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 44.42132 lat 24.34625 long A city that still keeps its chill even if the economy evolved a lot in the last decade d3scr))